Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh (14 February 1961-19 January 2010) was a Hamas commander who was one of the founders of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.

Biography
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was born on 14 February 1961 in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, one of 13 siblings. In the 1970s he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and in the 1980s he was responsible for sabotaging coffee shops were gambling was taking place. In 1986, Israel arrested him for owning an assault rifle - after his release, he joined Hamas. In 1989 he was responsible for the killing of IDF soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sa'adon, disguising himself as an Orthodox Jew. In 1989 his home was demolished in retribution for the attack.

Mabhouh was among the founders of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, serving as one of its military commanders. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades served as the armed wing of Hamas and its main force in fighting Israel on the battlefield, and Mabhouh smuggled weapons and explosives into Gaza. Mossad tried to kill him with a car bomb one time, and in 2009 he was rendered unconscious for 30 hours while in Beirut, Lebanon by Israeli poison. He was a wanted man by the Israeli government, Jordan, and Egypt, and he lived in Syria.

Eventually, Mabhouh decided to flee from Syria to Thailand. He had passports using five names, and flew from Damascus to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on the first leg of his trip. On the afternoon of 19 January 2010, he checked into the Al Bustan Rotana hotel and checked out an hour after checking in. At 8:25 PM, he returned to his room. Before 9:00 PM, 11 Mossad agents using fradulent passports (6 from the United Kingdom, 5 from Ireland, 3 from Australia, 1 from France, and 1 from Germany) that had tracked him down from Damascus to Dubai injected him with muscle relaxant and smothered him to death with a pillow. At 8:55 PM his wife called him, but he did not respond - he may have been dead or being killed at the time.

In June 2010, Germany arrested the German-passported Mossad agent in Warsaw, Poland. Many nations condemned the actions, including the countries that the fake passports belonged to, Iran, Lebanon, Sweden, Luxembourg, Spain, the European Union, and the United Nations.